The Winchester Redux
by jam-tomorrow-and-jam-yesterday
Summary: A What-If-AU. Mary scratches a series of tiny sigils, a key of Solomon and some obscure Hebrew that she didn't know she still remembered, in the paint of the sill in the bathroom when she runs out of salt and prays that her memory holds enough detail to keep the tatters of her family safe.
1. part i

_**AU. I am pretending lots of things that weren't part of canon and also conveniently ignoring lots of things that were part of canon because I don't own and therefore cannot actually change anything. This is basically a giant, angsty accident and a terrible excuse for me to write BAMF!Mary. May be more!  
**_  
**i.** _Mary stayed in bed on November 2__nd__, 1983, like the strange hunter told her to in 1973. The bad memory that time of her life becomes is nothing compared to the one that November 2__nd__, 1995, turns into when the life she's carved out with John and their boys goes up in flames._

Dean knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his father is downstairs because he'd left him there not even two minutes ago after going down for a drink and to let the dog out. The man was dozing in front of the television set with a lukewarm beer sweating on the end table. There was no way he'd made it upstairs in the time it had taken Dean to gulp down a glass of water.

He crosses another off the safe list because he'd dropped Beth off at home, two miles away, nearly three hours ago and this figure is almost a foot taller than her. He can see the Sam-shaped lump under the covers and the process of elimination just leaves his mother. There is nothing feminine, nothing at all like Mary, about the silhouette leaning over his little brother's bed and every protective instinct in his body goes into overdrive at the realisation.

The next thing he knows he's crashing through the doorway without a second thought, calling for help not even crossing his mind, and lunging for the figure in a tackle that would've made his coach proud. A snarl leaves his lips as he goes, because _hell_ if any creep is going to get near Sam on his watch, but no sound comes out and he never makes impact. A pair of yellow eyes glow in the dark as something catches him and flings. He hits the wall with a muffled thump that should have been louder.

His brother doesn't stir as he ends up spread-eagled against the wall. Dean opens his mouth to shout for someone, _anyone_, and the silhouette makes a disapproving noise even though nothing comes out. Dean struggles against the invisible grip, silently screaming for his father, as it slowly forces his body up the wall and into an awkward slide across the surface of the ceiling.

"Well, well, well." The voice is smooth and faintly accented, somehow matches the smarmy-looking face that comes into view as his path skirts the light fitting, and Dean redoubles his efforts to get free even as he keeps trying to scream for his parents because _Sammy _and _what the hell is happening _and _why are this guy's eyes __**yellow**_. "What an unexpected surprise." White teeth appear briefly in a smile. "It must be my birthday. Usually it's the parents or the pets who interrupt and need to be taken care of but you're the lucky one tonight, huh?"

Dean's right over Sam's bed now, held in place by bands of invisible iron that won't budge, and he can see that the twelve year old is sleeping peacefully. There are drops of something dark spotting his lips and Dean thrashes uselessly against the invisible force holding him against the roof. Sam snuffles quietly, shifts in the bed, and flops a hand out of the protection of the coverlet. The blood around his mouth glistens and Dean snarls again, pointlessly, and hopes that his face conveys the message because _he is going to kill this son of a bitch dead for touching Sammy_.

The yellow eyes flash terrifyingly bright and his blood runs ice cold at the low chuckle he hears just before another drop of blood tracks slowly down over Sam's lips. Dean thrashes again, all helpless fury, but he can't move a muscle as the man's wrist hovers over Sam's face. A flick of one bloodstained finger is all the warning he gets before his abdomen splits wide open. He can't even scream.

/.\

Something warm and wet is on his face, slowly drying on his chin, and the sensation drags Sam slowly into consciousness. He rubs at it, mumbles a grumpy "What the hell, Dean? Get out of my room!" before blinking as something else warm and wet drops onto his forearm. His fingers find a damp patch, wound tight in the blanket, as he rolls onto his side and he thanks God his pants are dry because if Dean made him wet himself again he really was going to kill him.

He can't see anything, at first, which is weird in itself because Dean usually has his face pressed real close to scare him. There's no wicked grin right in front of his eyes or cool puff of breath by his ear and all he can see is the open door across the room and the reflection of the light from the window against the polish of his desk. He catches the edge of a shadow on the side of his bed and frowns. "Dean?" he says, rubbing his eyes and twisting onto his back again. "What're you doing, you idiot?"

Another drop of something warm and wet falls, this one landing against the bare skin of his cheek, and he jerks his hands away from his eyes and stares straight up. Someone's standing over him, bleeding wrist held over his face and glowing eyes yellower than any cat Sam thinks he's ever seen, and they wink. "Good evening, Sammy," a smooth voice says. "Expecting your big brother, perhaps?"

Sam pushes himself back towards the headboard, as far away from the man as he can, and draws his legs up towards his chest instinctively. The man winks again and offers a jaunty smile that makes Sam's skin crawl. "Well, I shan't disappoint." He flicks his eyes upwards as though encouraging him to look before winking again as he disappears in a heartbeat, nothing but a brief ripple of air to say he'd ever been there, and Sam's eyes refocus on the ceiling. They widen so much, so desperately, that it hurts. Sam can see exactly where the blood on the comforter is coming from now and Tank's bark from downstairs barely reaches his ears before a scream tears itself from his throat.

"_Dean_!"

/.\

John jolts awake at the deep, booming, bark of the dog and the clatter of paws on the floorboards near the back door. His youngest's voice a split second later, high and shrill and cracking with a breathtakingly real terror as he screams his brother's name, is enough to shake the last vestiges of sleep off and force his body into almost unconscious action. He faintly hears the crash of the beer bottle toppling from the end table, ignores it, and takes the stairs three at a time.

His feet hit the landing at the same time Mary reaches the end of the hallway where the boys' rooms are, the barking dog on his heels, and Sam is still screaming Dean's name as they both barrel through the doorway. Pressed tight against the headboard, Sam's eyes are locked on the ceiling and there are tracks of something dark shining on his face and all over the comforter. Part of John is waiting for Dean to come skidding into the room, sleep-rumpled and bleary-eyed, but he can't hear anything from the hallway.

"Sam!" Mary is passing him in an instant, reaching for their son, and John's eyes scan the rest of the room for danger as he wonders where the hell Dean is with Sam screaming like that. Tank, hackles raised, continues to bark furiously and paw at the foot of the bed with a fierce urgency. John's appraisal of the room comes up empty in the few seconds it takes Mary to curl herself around Sam. A glance at the dog and his frantic son, still screaming for Dean, prompts his eyes to follow Sam's line of sight and he forgets how to breathe just as it slips from his throat.

"_Dean_."

/.\

Mary's whole body is quivering with adrenaline as she steps around John, lightning fast, and pulls Sam tight against her as he continues to scream Dean's name. She whispers soothing nonsense to her youngest son to dispel whatever vestiges of his nightmare are still lingering. It has no effect as he stares past her face in unrelenting terror and she thinks, half-hysterical already, that Dean must have stayed the night at Beth's because there's no way he wouldn't have come running already if he were in earshot.

Her ears are ringing with the sound of pounding blood and barking and she gathers Sam even closer. Something warm and wet drips onto her arm, the one furthest from his face and she looks to John in confusion. He isn't looking at either she or Sam in that moment and an instant flood of ice turns her insides cold as she follows her husband's gaze to the ceiling.

The glazed, panicked eyes of her eldest are the first thing she sees and she stops breathing. The green stare is locked on Sam with an utterly unfamiliar fear and confusion she's never seen on his face. The second is the blood soaking his white sleep-shirt, dripping onto Sam and the bed, and the third is the silent scream etched on his face that she almost thinks she can hear over the sudden silence in her head.

She thinks that silence is the loudest thing she's ever heard. She knows better when her own scream breaks it and the sudden rush of air, the crackle and snap as the entire ceiling, including her son, is engulfed in flames.

"_Dean_!"

/.\

Somewhere in China, a butterfly settles on a different branch. 

* * *

_**This might be why no one ever lets me have nice things.**_


	2. part ii

_**See first chapter for disclaimer. Props to **April **for the lovely beta.****  
**_

**ii. **_John wishes it had been him that died on that ceiling, Sam has the missing pieces but no idea what to do with them and Mary can do nothing but watch as her past and present tangle in the ashes of the future she'd planned._

"Mary!" John roars over the sound of the crackling flames as urgency shatters the long moment of shock. "Mary, take Sam!"

He hauls the sobbing, screaming boy off the bed and towards the doorway in one motion and doesn't hesitate to push Mary in the same direction even as she stumbles. He knows that her eyes are still locked on the ceiling where one of their boys is burning but they don't have _time_. "Mary, goddammit, take Sam and _go_! Now!"

Something sinks in, he thinks, because her hands reach for Sam and they're both invisible once they reach the door because of the smoke. He thinks he can hear the faint echo of their footsteps pound down the hallway but that could just be his pulse throbbing in his ears. He turns back to the ceiling and can't see anything for the glare of the flames but it only takes two steps before he's up on the bed and reaching for the ceiling, knowing without a doubt exactly where his son is, because he can't stop seeing their boy burning either.

The flames don't get a chance to do more than lick tauntingly at John's hands and forearms, singing the hair and flushing the skin with heat, before something hits him in the stomach and launches him off the bed and onto the ground. He twists as he lands, the air leaving his lungs in a painful rush and the smell of burning flesh searing his nose all at once, and gasps for breath but only finds smoke. Agonising seconds are lost as his lungs protest and then something snags the shirt fabric near his shoulder and pulls towards the door.

The heat is overwhelming, the smell of blood and fire making him retch, and he knows with a hazy kind of certainty that Dean is well beyond his help. He needs to get Sam and Mary and _go_. It takes almost all the strength he can muster to roll onto his stomach and gain a little ground on the fire that is still burning on the ceiling.

Whatever has a grip on his shirt breaks the skin of his shoulder with a particularly urgent tug and he manages to get to his hands and knees. He has to gasp for breath and can barely even see anymore. The flames spread to the wall and Sam's bookshelf ignites, flooding the room with even more smoke, and the pressure releases him before howling right in his ear.

He wheezes, something strangled that he thinks is supposed to resemble the name of Dean's beloved dog, but the pressure is back and pushes hard against his side. The animal howls again, butts his head forcefully right into John's ribs, and John lurches towards the door still on his hands and knees as black spots dance across his vision. He makes it to the doorway, drags himself up, and the dog pushes insistently at his legs to propel him into the hall just as the window explodes outwards with an ear-splitting crash.

His knees are shaking under him at the top of the staircase and he stumbles to the first landing with his hand wound in the collar at Tank's neck. The dog drags him down the remaining stairs before he even realises they've made it out of the bedroom, lets him rest against a wall for long enough to suck in as much clean air as he can, and then surges towards the front door with John in tow and every muscle straining.

John can hear the distant sound of sirens over the roaring of the fire above his head as he nearly goes to his knees when his toe catches the edge of the rug in the entryway. One staggering step is all it takes before he hits the door and a cry claws free of his dry throat as it swings open under his weight.

"D-_Deeee_…go-god oh g-god… _Dean_!"

/.\

Mary cradles Sam against her side and closes her stinging eyes, like they're shields, against the smoke and the tears and the wreckage of the upper level of the house. Even with them closed she can't banish the image of Dean, his own eyes wide and agonised and utterly terrified, pinned to the ceiling and consumed by flames. Sam's screams have quietened to breathless, ceaseless, sobs and she pulls him closer.

"Hu-hush baby." Her voice cracks and a shudder travels the entire way down her spine as she hears their neighbours shouting. Someone is trying to put their arm around her and ease them both off the hood of the Impala. Mary shrugs it off and lowers her head towards Sam, crooning softly, "Mommy's here, baby, and Daddy's coming."

The wailing of the sirens makes Sam's shoulders stiffen beneath her arm and she hears the thunderous sound of the bedroom window exploding outwards and covering the front yard with shards of glass. A sob bubbles up in her throat and she rocks Sam slightly, still crooning, and refuses to look up. She isn't going to look up unless her husband and her son are going to be there, stumbling across the lawn towards the Impala, when she does.

Sam grabs at the neck of her nightgown, eyes fixed on the house, and her head jerks up. Her eyes are open wide before she can even make the conscious decision to look and she sees John crash through the front door in a plume of smoke. No Dean.

A keening sound tears itself from her throat.

/.\

"Mom." Sam's voice is tiny and terrified. "Mom, who was that man?"

Mary tightens her grip on him and tries to forget the crackle and pop of the flames. It's still dark but definitely sometime early Thursday morning, she thinks, and they're finally done with the hospital and the police officers and settled in a motel room for a few days. These are the first words Sam has spoken since he stopped screaming for his big brother and she forces herself to concentrate on them. "What man, sweetheart?"

"In my room." The words drown the fire in ice and she draws in a sudden breath.

"There was a man in your room?"

Sam nods into her shoulder. "He had yellow eyes, Mom. I thought-I thought-" his breath hitches and he quivers against her, "I thought D-Dean was trying to make me wet the bed again. He had yellow eyes, Mom, and he called me 'Sammy' and asked if I was expecting Dean instead."

Tendrils of ice are winding around her lungs. Sam's breath wobbles again and he clings harder. "He-he was _bleeding_ on me, Mom, and when he disappeared I saw… he disappeared and then-then, Mom, oh my God, Mom- _Dean _was up there-" the words dissolve into hacking sobs and she thinks that her heart is going to stop.

"Sam, sweetheart, you have to tell me _everything_."

/.\

Mary leaves the king-sized motel bed only when she's sure that John and Sam are asleep. She collects every grain of salt there is in the room's kitchenette, hands shaking, and takes a few deep breaths. There's enough there to cover the front door, invisible against the light coloured carpets, and the biggest windows. She thinks so, anyway, and takes a few moments for her pounding heart to settle.

It's been years since she's had to think like this, in terms of exit routes and defensible positions, and the way it all comes flooding back is both reassuring and terrifying because she knows that there's no running from this anymore. She turned tail and ran for the sake of John, for the future that her beautiful boys embodied, and it had caught up to her and torn her world right out from under her feet.

Tank watches her from the foot of the bed and she scratches his head in passing each time she crosses near enough. His fur is warm and soft underneath her hands and she remembers putting a tiny bundle of that fur in ten year old Dean's arms six years ago. The thought stings her eyes, tightens her throat, and she has to leave the room.

Mary scratches a series of tiny sigils, a key of Solomon and some obscure Hebrew that she didn't know she still remembered, in the paint of the sill in the bathroom when she runs out of salt and prays that her memory holds enough detail to keep the tatters of her family safe.

* * *

_**And there's part ii.**_


	3. part iii

_**Beta done by the wonderful **__demon-with-a-whip-in-hand__**. I hope everyone's enjoying it so far!**_

**iii. **_Mary needs to come clean with John because even she has a thousand unanswered questions._

John startles awake when Sam wriggles against him. His arms tighten reflexively and his eyes, gummy and sore from smoke and sleep, shoot open. "Hey, Sammy, settle," he says and his voice is hoarse and ragged. Awareness hits like a semi to the gut and his arms tighten around his son even more.

"S'it time for school?" Sam asks sleepily but his face remains buried in John's neck and Mary stirs on the other side of him. Her jaw pops with a yawn and John can see the exact moment the events of the night before hit her as well because her entire body curls in upon itself and neither of them answer his question.

Sam wriggles again, his breath warm against John's skin, and scrunches up his face. "Why am I in your bed?" he mutters, barely half-awake. "Have you been smoking? You smell like a freaking ashtray."

John's entire body goes rigid and Sam rolls away from him and towards Mary who gathers him to her and closes her eyes for a moment. A tear streaks down each of her cheeks. "Dean's gonna be mad if we're late to get Beth," the twelve year old continues, voice lethargic and muffled, and John thinks that his stomach is trying to crawl out of his mouth because _what can he even say to that_. "C'n you wake me in ten? Don't wanna get the atomic wedgie."

"Of course, sweetie," Mary whispers, voice trembling, and Sam is fast asleep within seconds. The semi hits John again and again and again until there isn't a single part of his body that isn't aching with loss.

"Mary," he breathes and his throat burns. "_Mary_."

Her hand, cool and soft, settles on his elbow. "I got it, baby," she murmurs and shifts Sam closer to him before disentangling herself from the lanky arms. Sam's hands close tightly around the fabric of John's shirt. "Take care of Sam, okay? I'll handle everything else."

/.\

The clock shows that it's almost two pm by the time Mary drags herself out of the bathroom, checks the salt lines, and makes it to the sofa in the small living area. She stares at her hands for a long moment and wonders if she just doesn't move then maybe she can still wake up and have this all just be the most godawful nightmare she's ever had. The things she saw hunting have nothing on the last twelve hours of her life. Hell, not even 1973 has a patch on this and a giggle, more hysterical than anything, escapes at that because 1973 and the ten year anniversary is something she hasn't thought about in years.

She lays her hands over her knees and closes her eyes with a deep breath. A sudden urge to call her father for help, to let her mother tell her that everything is going to be okay even though she knows it's a downright lie, makes it hard to breathe. A circuit of the room, a check of the salt lines and the sigils, does little to put her mind at ease and she settles back on the sofa with the dog. Some small part of her wants to cry but another is raging inside her ribcage, railing at the thought that the supernatural has picked _now_ of all times to drag her back in, alight with the kind of fury that only grief can ignite.

By the time it turns to three John has ended up on the sofa with her, moving slow and careful like his whole body hurts, and quietly said that he wants to know everything she knows. His voice sounds painful, like someone has sandpapered his vocal chords, and it strikes her silent for a long moment

"Should have known you'd see the salt," she says eventually and sounds more like a tired shade of herself than the quip she was going for.

John doesn't laugh and she knows just from the slump of his shoulders that his insides are as twisted with grief as hers.

/.\

It takes Mary a while to gather herself, a while to decide where to start, and find the words she needs.

"You remember the night you asked me to marry you?" Mary asks quietly after a few moments of heavy silence. She thinks that the fact John isn't demanding she hurry up and get on with it says more for the situation than any words she could find. "When I said yes and begged you to just take me away so we could start our own life?"

John nods. "The night your parents died." A shadow passes over his eyes as the words leave his throat like they were dragged from it and Mary doesn't think she's ever felt quite so helpless before.

"You remember how you used to tell me that my dad reminded you of your CO in Vietnam?"

Another nod and there's a steady kind of expectancy in the way he's looking at her that helps dissolve the lump in her throat a little.

"He wasn't a military man," she says and hopes her voice holds steady. "But he fought a war right to the day he died. It wasn't any war that you read about in the paper or even one where you wear your fatigues and have a squad at your back. I grew up fighting it too."

He puts his hand on her knee, rough and warm and strong, and she swallows. "I fought it with him right up until the day _you_ died, John."

John stiffens in surprise. "Co-" he coughs. "Come again?"

"A demon," Mary says and his fingers tighten around her knee as disbelief writes itself across the lines of her husband's face. "We were hunting him but he killed you and he killed my mom and my dad and he said he could bring you back if I promised him one thing."

The disbelief turns into rage and the grip borders on painful as John finds his voice. He doesn't even question the existence of demons and Mary guesses that what they'd seen in Sam's room that night was enough for even a sceptic like him. "What, you-you traded our firstborn son? For my life? _Dean_? Mary-"

"No!" Mary chokes out and the accusation feels like a sucker punch to the gut. "God, _no_, I would never have agreed to that."

John doesn't look appeased and his voice ends up lower and rougher than ever. "Th-then what? You couldn't pay up and he decided to collect?" His mouth tightens and he barks out another ragged cough. "Why didn't he take one of us instead?"

"I don't know," she says and he must hear the pained honesty in her voice because his grip on her knee loosens. The pressure becomes gentler, more like a reassurance, and she leans closer to him because he has to understand that she didn't promise their son to a demon. "His terms weren't for Dean, John, I swear. This was in 1973 and all he wanted was permission to enter my house in exactly ten years. He swore no one was going to be hurt, I made sure that was the deal, so long as he wasn't interrupted. That was _all_, John, I swear."

"Nothing happened in '83." John's voice is hollow and the confusion is creeping back into his face. "Nothing happened then. Sam was born but how did-" he shakes his head slightly and makes a garbled sound of disbelief. "Tell me about what happened in '73."

"We were hunting something. Didn't know what it was yet but there was this man," Mary says. "Another hunter. Said we were after a demon and he ended up in town because he was tracking it too, had this legendary gun that could kill anything, and was after this thing because it killed his family. He was kind of strange, we'd never seen him around town before, but he was the one who figured out it was a demon. He said he was going to kill it with this legendary gun. When he left he told me not to get out of bed that night. November second, 1983. He said that no matter what I heard, no matter what I saw, I needed to just stay in bed. He made me promise him, said everything would be okay if I didn't, and I told him I wouldn't -"

She breaks off and rubs at her eyes. "The demon was going after my friend, Liddy Walsh. We went to stop him but he got the jump on us. The other hunter almost got him with Colt's gun but he managed to get loose. He got into my dad." John inhales sharply.

"Th-that was…"

Mary nods and leans into him. "Yeah. We didn't save Liddy from making the deal and I begged you to just take me away. The demon killed Dad, and Mom, and then he snapped your neck dragging you away from me. He said he'd bring you back and I could get out if I just gave him permission to come in ten years from then. He said no one would get hurt if he wasn't interrupted. Swore it. He didn't want my soul, just permission. We had just sealed it when the hunter got there. When you woke up, the demon and the hunter were gone, my dad was dead and we ran."

John nods once and presses a kiss into her hair. She closes her eyes.

"So," he murmurs after a moment of silence. "Tell me more about demons."

/.\

Sam stumbles into the living area sometime after four, bleary-eyed and tousle-haired, and his confusion is painfully apparent. He rubs at his eyes and blinks at Mary and John. "M-Mom?" he asks and his voice stumbles over a yawn. "Dad? S'goin' on?"

"Sammy," Mary says softly.

John doesn't say anything.

They both see reality destroy Sam's half-asleep haze of confusion and are halfway across the room as his knees buckle and he barely manages to catch himself on the edge of the kitchenette counter.

John's arm keeps him upright and the other pulls Mary in to close the circle of three that's all they have left. Sam buries his face in his father's shoulder and sobs.


	4. interlude i

**_Just one of many moments where the Winchesters realise life hasn't stopped to let them mourn. Props again to_**_ demon-with-a-whip-in-hand__** for being just generally wonderful.**_

**interlude i.** _The chasm between the Winchesters and the blissfully ignorant began to widen the moment their home burst into flames. It just took a while for the dust to settle before they noticed._

The motel manager knocks on their door on Friday morning, soft spoken and sympathetic and bearing paper bags of basic groceries and donated clean clothes, and tells John that the office has received a number of calls enquiring about them from concerned neighbours and friends. He has a list of names.

Sam, curled against Mary on the sofa, glances up and blinks. The outside world has seemed an unimportant and vague concept up until that point.

/.\

John calls Mike Guenther while Mary tries to coax Sam into eating something. As reality descends she realises that not one of them have eaten since dinnertime on Wednesday. Sam picks listlessly at the tomato rice soup and grilled cheese she manages to put together as John rasps out the basics.

She reinforces the salt lines with the canister from the paper bag and takes a moment to steady herself while she's crouched down in front of the front door. The kindness of the motel staff is enough to start tears prickling at her eyes again and she stays there until she hears John hang up the phone in the bedroom.

Mary settles herself in the bedroom with the phone when John has moved to the sofa with Sam, the television playing an afternoon soap opera quietly, and runs through what needs to be done in her head.

She stares at the reciever for a long moment and wonders if she just doesn't call then maybe she can still wake up and have this all just be the most godawful nightmare she's ever had. The things she saw hunting have nothing on the last two days of her life. Hell, not even 1973 has a patch on this. She settles her hand on the phone and the plastic is smooth underneath her palm as her fingers close around it instinctively.

"Not a nightmare," she says to herself and a tear slides, all too easily, down her face. "For Christ's sake, Mary, get yourself together. Handle the normal things and then get on with everything else."

It takes another bitter reality check and a long look towards John and Sam, still curled together on the sofa with Tank sitting guard between them and the door, before her eyes are dry and her nerves as close to steady as they're going to get. Her fingers still shake when she dials the familiar number, chokes back a sob at the thought that she knows it by heart because of _Dean_, and holds the phone to her ear.

"Lawrence High reception desk, this is Colette," a cheerful voice answers after the sixth ring.

"Colette?" Mary says and her voice holds better than she'd hoped for. She's been friends with Colette since before Sam was even born and considers her one of her closest friends. She can do this. "It's Mary."

"Mary? I've been trying to reach you and John since yesterday!" the woman says with a distinct note of relief in her voice. "Genevieve Cartwright was blabbing all over the place that there'd been a fire at your place and then it was on the news but we couldn't get sense out of nobody except that someone saw you all taken away in an ambulance. Hospital wouldn't give me anything except that John was discharged early Thursday and, oh Mary, Elizabeth was _beside_ herself when she got here. Swung by your place on the way to see if Dean had a reason to be late to get her and saw the damage. Renee came and picked her up and said if you called to get in touch with them. She isn't in class today and we haven't been able to find out what exactly happened aside from a wiring fault. Thank God you called."

A giggle, more hysterical than anything, bubbles out of Mary's mouth before she can bite her lip because Beth driving by the house when Dean didn't arrive to pick her up is something she hadn't considered when she thought about all the normal things you have to do when someone dies. The thought of the teenage girl that is practically a Winchester too is almost enough to push her over the edge.

She doesn't remember a thing that the firemen said about what parts of the house were salvageable. She doesn't remember even looking at the house after John had stumbled out to them. She knows that Sam's room was almost certainly a lost cause. A violent sob follows the giggle and she bites her lip to muffle it.

"Mary? Are you okay?" Colette asks and Mary closes her eyes, lets out another sob because there's a backlog of them jammed painfully tight in her throat by now, and squeezes the receiver so hard her fingers ache. "Mary?"

"Sorry," she chokes out and swipes at her eyes. The next sound she makes is some kind of hybrid between a hiccup and another sob. It sounds like the noises Dean used to make before he could talk and she thinks about slamming the phone down, demanding a do-over, calling back when she can pretend that she isn't teetering on the edge of a complete meltdown. She keeps talking instead. "C-can you let Sam's teach-teachers know he-he'll be out f-for a while?"

"Of course," the receptionist says quietly. "I can do that. Is he okay, Mary?"

She wants to say yes but all she can manage is a strangled sound because there's a world of difference between _yes he's okay _and _he's alive but he watched something that goes bump in the night murder his brother on the ceiling over his bed_. Colette's sharp intake of breath is enough for her to force "Sam's okay," out of her tightening throat followed by another hiccupping sob.

Lying is practically second nature to a hunter and the bitter thought leaves tendrils of ice to wind their way around her ribs and flick at her lungs.

"Mary, honey." Colette sounds relieved and worried and scared all at once and the sound of her voice is just another thing that Mary thinks is trying to make her shatter into a million pieces. All it does is remind her of the past twenty two years and how quickly it had all come crashing down around her. She doesn't think she can lie anymore and the ice is stabbing at her insides. "I'm real glad Sam's okay but what about everyone else?"

"Fi-fire." Mary's mouth tastes like ash all over again and she presses the tips of her fingers into her eyes to try and stave off the glare of the flames and the _terror_ in her beautiful baby boy's eyes. It doesn't work and her entire body heaves with the force of the next sob and then all that comes out is a garbled kind of whimper. "Took _Dean_."

Colette says something, she's sure of that much, but all of a sudden she really can't breathe and the phone is clattering from her limp fingers onto the table beside the bed.

It could have been seconds or hours, she doesn't know, before Sam crawls into her lap and his face nestles into her neck. The hand in her hair is John, she's sure of that much, and the warmth on her legs the dog. She lifts her arms to rest on Sam's back. The twelve year old's tears are hot against her skin and his sobs are quiet and confused, like he doesn't quite know _why_ he's crying but can't stop all the same, where hers make her entire body shake with the force of her grief because she knows exactly what she's lost.

/.\

The sound of Mary's sob from the bedroom sends John to his feet abruptly enough that his head spins. Sam jerks out of his dozing with a gasp at the sound of something clattering, still with a death grip on his flannel shirt, and through blurry eyes John can see the exact moment awareness hits his son too. The boy moves quicker than John and he disappears into the other room just as John takes his first step towards the doorway.

He gets there in time to see Sam curl himself into a ball of arms and legs on Mary's lap, the dog sprawled against her legs. His wife is shaking on the bed, pressed up against the headboard, and he sees the phone abandoned on the small table beside her. If he concentrates he thinks he can hear the faint sounds of someone shouting over it. It only takes him another second to cross the room, settle a hand in Mary's hair as her arms go around Sam, and pick up the fallen receiver.

Another second is all it takes before he recognises Colette Wilson's voice on the other end. "Colette," he says and his voice sounds like he's speaking around a mouthful of glass shards. He'd been treated for smoke inhalation, told to stay quiet while his throat heals, but even a day later it still feels as though someone had tried to take out his tonsils with a white hot poker.

The words spilling over the earpiece stop suddenly before the silence disappears in another flurry of questions. "John? Jesus, John, you sound awful. What happened? Is Mary okay? She just stopped talking and all I could hear was her crying and-and she said Sam won't be at school for a while. I heard about the fire but she said something about Dean and then just stopped-"

John swallows, tries to wet his lips and make the words come easier, but they stick in his throat anyway. "Was a fire'n Sam's room," he rasps and feels the truth bubbling up right beside the lie. "D-D-" he breaks off to cough and can't seem to force his son's name out because everything hurts too much.

Mary is still shaking under his hand and Sam is still sobbing quietly and he tries to drag in another breath. His mouth tastes like ash. "He-he got stuck. I tr- god, I coul-couldn't get him… didn't-" his breath hitches around the lump in his throat.

"W-what? Oh-oh my _God_."

* * *

_**Shout outs to those who have reviewed so far - it's motivating to hear from you guys!**_


	5. interlude ii

**_Another little moment in time._**

**interlude ii. **_There are people that Mary hadn't considered in the immediate aftermath. Some of them might surprise her._

Tank lifts his head from where it rests against Sam's thigh, intent eyes fixed on the door to the hotel room, and John's whole body tenses in anticipation at the warning before he even consciously thinks about it.

Mary puts a gentle hand on his chest and pushes herself off the sofa. Her eyes are damp and bloodshot. "He isn't barking, John. It'll just be Jason and Renee with Beth," she murmurs. "We're safe here, baby, I promise." He trusts her words but doesn't think he'll be satisfied until he knows why they're safe, beyond being told that paint and the strange symbols mean that demons can't get in, and how to do it himself.

Sam leans further into John's side, pale faced and almost boneless with apathy, as his hand comes to rest on the dog's back. "Good boy," he says quietly but his voice is flat. Tank settles his head back down on Sam's thigh with a soft whining noise and John tries to force the tension from his limbs. Sam needs comfort more than John needs answers right now.

By the time the knock comes Mary is already there and she opens the door slowly. John's eyes are fixed on the door and they assess the most obvious threat automatically, because his Marine training is all he can bring to bear in that moment, as the three people at the door enter the room.

Jason is John's height, less solid muscle, and some part of him screams at the injustice of the fact that he knows instantly that three blows are all he would need to take the man he considers one of his best friends down permanently. Most of him, though, clings to the thought like a safety blanket which is somehow as unsettling as it is comforting.

He knows without looking that one blow is all he'd need to take the trembling, five foot four Renee down. If he'd had any concentration to spare he might have noted that he probably wouldn't need it at all because the woman was shaking so hard that a breeze would knock her over.

The sight of Beth, though, is enough to shut the Marine training down mid-assessment. The teenage girl's eyes are darting around the motel room so frantically that he has to wonder whether she's actually seeing anything at all. He sees Mary take a step towards her, eyes already tearing up again, when the girl goes suddenly, rigidly, still.

John knows with every fibre of his being that she isn't seeing anything at all and that is the problem. John knows that her eyes are searching for even a single sign of Dean and he knows the moment she realises that there isn't one because her entire body tightens like a rubber band pulled taut.

The realisation tears a ragged, breathless sound from his throat and her eyes instantly snap to his even as Mary reaches for her. He can see that she knows, sees it in the way that the clear blue darkens for a split second, but the words spill from her lips anyway.

"Dean. Where's Dean?"

She slips past Mary's outstretched hand and takes half a dozen quick steps until she's in the one position where she can see into each of the three rooms. "Dean?" she calls and her voice wavers. "Dean, please."

Not a single one of the four adults in the room can move in that moment, the desperate note of pleading in her voice making it impossible to even breathe, and so Sam slides out from underneath Tank when no one else moves. The twelve year old is unsteady on his feet and she reaches him in a heartbeat.

Sam nudges Tank aside and tries to stand because he can't bear to watch Beth keep looking around, can't bear to hear her keep calling out, like Dean is just going to come strolling out of the bathroom in a towel with that shit-eating grin on his face. His knees don't seem to want to adjust to standing up again and she's by his side, tucked under his arm and taking some of the strain off, just before they give out completely.

"Sammy," she says and he can feel her shaking. He can hear the words underneath his name in her voice, plain as day, and they make his whole body ache. _Where is he what happened Sammy please I need him right now don't you dare tell me Dean's gone_.

He blinks, sees Dean on the ceiling like the image is seared into the back of his eyelids and sobs out her name and then his brother's like it could be an apology, and the tears fall before he can even try and stop them. They burn down his cold cheeks like fire and the sensation makes him cry harder.

Beth's arms snake around him and he throws his own around her neck and hears her quiet, frantic, litany pour out into the fabric of his sweatshirt. She chokes on the infinite loop of "_no oh my God Dean no_" and then he's staggering back towards the sofa with her weight braced against his shoulder because neither of them can hold themselves up anymore.

/.\

Jason lets his son Tyson, twenty five and already every inch the combat hardened Marine John will always be, into the room while Mary and Renee settle Beth and Sam. The two mothers smooth mussed hair and don't say anything because words mean nothing right then.

The young soldier takes half a minute to absorb every detail of the room and occupants. His eyes linger on his blanket draped sister and on the dried tear tracks visible on both her face and Sam's longer than anything else before tracking across his parents and then Mary to land on John.

"God, I'm sorry," he says and the words are quiet and heartfelt and almost completely undo Mary. Both she and John sees the flare of fury, the dangerous gleam that settles somewhere in that thousand yard stare, and wonder whether the memory of the blood that proves it wasn't just the fire that took their boy is written in their faces.

They know that it _is_ written in their features when the soldier pulls both Winchesters against him as he speaks, voice low and rough, and the words are for their ears only. "Whatever did this will not go unpunished, I swear."

Mary manages to bite back her surprise, only just, and John's grip on the younger man tightens like a _thank you_.

/.\

It takes seventy two minutes for Beth and Sam, piled haphazardly on the sofa, to exhaust themselves into a restless sleep while the five adults watch in the kind of silence that weighs more than any words.

* * *

_**Next part is probably only a couple of days away. Hope you're all still enjoying!**_


	6. part iv

**part iv.** _Tyson Richardson is twenty five and as much a hunter as he is a soldier. He doesn't need to ask whether there was anything supernatural about the fire that shattered the life of the family that would have been his baby sister's one day because it's written right there in John and Mary's faces. _

Tyson manages to get Mary out of earshot of his parents about an hour after Beth and Sam fall into an exhausted sleep. Her face hardens and she narrows her eyes at him.

"What do you know?" she demands without preamble. "_How_ do you know?"

He doesn't drop her gaze but he loosens his posture deliberately. "About what happened to Dean?" he asks. "Nothing except that it wasn't just a fire and I only know that because a normal fire wouldn't make you and John look like you do."

She relaxes, marginally, but keeps looking at him intently. He quirks up a corner of his mouth in half a smirk. "It was an ifrit," he says. "Three years ago. Took out half my team and they called it a bomb. Didn't fit what I saw so I did some digging and came up with different answers. There's this guy out in South Dakota, Bobby Singer, who helped me out. He's the go-to hunter guy of the Midwest. He could help you figure out what it was."

"I know what it was," Mary says, anger flashing in her eyes, and Tyson lifts an eyebrow. Her voice lowers and there's a note of ice that makes him think that she knows far more than he thought. "A demon. Same one killed my parents in '73."

"I'm sorry," he says instantly, almost before the words sink in. "You should put lines of salt-"

"I've laid salt lines," she says, shaking her head slightly. "A few sigils, a key of Solomon. It's been over twenty years so I'm rusty but I'm not letting that bastard in again."

"You hunted?" Reconciling the petite, easy-going blonde woman he's known for the last ten years with the rough and ready hunters he's come across in the last three proves to be a little much for him to manage at that moment.

"Born into it," she says shortly. "Can you put me in touch with this Singer guy?"

"Of course," he says, blinking. "How- how do you know it was this demon? Is his signature setting places on fire? I haven't heard of a demon that does that."

Mary's face is pinched. "He wanted something with Sam and we think Dean interrupted. Sam woke up with blood dripping on him and-" her breathing hitches and his throat tightens. "He said there was a man with yellow eyes who knew his name standing over his bed. The demon in '73 had yellow eyes but if he was going to do anything it should have been in '83 instead of now."

Tyson files that information away for later. Mary takes a breath and continues. "The demon disappeared when Sam woke up. The dog came inside barking and Sam started screaming for Dean. John and I ran to his room and Dean-" she squeezes her eyes shut tightly and Tyson steps forward to hug her. "He was pinned to the ceiling. It looked like he was screaming but couldn't make a sound. I don't-I don't know if he was - there was just so much blood. The whole ceiling went up in flames and I took Sam and ran. John tried-"

Tyson tightens his arms around her and fights down the surge of fury. "I'm so sorry, Mary," he says softly. The interaction feels more like dealing with a victim of the supernatural than another hunter now and he feels a sharp pang of loss deep in his gut. This isn't a random family, he can't help but remind himself, isn't a random mother mourning her son. He knows Mary and he knows exactly why those tears are soaking his shirt because the thought of the young man he's been calling brother in his head for the last handful of years makes the same tears prick at his own eyes. "You did the right thing."

"I le-_left_ him." Her voice is muffled against his shoulder but he can feel the heat of the tears on her face through his shirt. "He… he must have been so scared. He was up there and I just took Sam and I _left_ him."

"Hey," he says, a lump growing in his own throat. "You think he would have ever thought of it that way? We talking about the same guy? I don't think I remember him ever being anything but fearless. I'd bet my last dollar if he was screaming anything it would have been for you and John to get Sammy out of there."

Her back trembles under his arms and the fabric against his chest is soaking through quickly but he keeps holding her.

/.\

Mary's eyes are red and her cheeks lined with dried tear trails when she and Tyson return. She comes to stand close by John's side and he holds her against him with one arm while the other grips Tyson's with a mix of gratitude and apprehension.

The younger man nods once, crisp and sharp, and there's an unspoken promise in his eyes when they meet. John feels the tiniest bit of tension ease out of him. Grief fills the space just as quickly but the warmth of Mary at his side helps as Tyson's grip tightens briefly before he lets go.

"I'll pick up some necessities for you," the young Marine says quietly. He gives Mary a slight nod. "Shouldn't take long."

/.\

John is the closest to the sofa when Beth stirs. Sam is a split second behind her, startling when she jerks into a sitting position, and John is halfway to sat down when her entire body seems to deflate.

Renee is there before John can do more than reach to untangle the blanket. Sam leans into him across the space Beth leaves when Renee pulls her into a hug, murmuring softly, and he eases an arm around his son. "I did that too," Sam says, his voice dull, and John shifts further towards him. "Woke up and forgot for a minute."

Beth's shoulders are shaking visibly and her response is garbled and inaudible. Sam seems to understand anyway, settling a hand high on her back, and she buries her face further into her mother's neck.

Mary looks at him from across the room as Jason moves to wrap both his wife and daughter in his arms. Her eyes are still red and watery and John blinks away the sting of his own tears all over again and says a silent prayer, a shout out to a God that he's beginning to not believe in if he could let something like this happen, for someone up there to watch out for his boy.

He looks at Mary, down at Sam, across to where Beth is sandwiched between her parents and adds a post script that he'll look out for those of them left behind. A tear manages to sneak past his guard as he hopes that the message reaches Dean somehow.

* * *

_**Huge thanks to **__demon-with-a-whip-in-hand__** for all her beta work and support so far.**_


	7. interlude iii

**interlude iii.** _It takes a while for the shock to fade but, when it does, Sam kind of wishes it had lingered a while longer. The reality of life without his brother is dark and lonely and Sam doesn't like it at all._

The day after the fire doesn't really exist, at least not in Sam's mind, as anything more than some kind of hazy in-between. He vaguely remembers waking up in the unfamiliar bed between his parents, the smell of ash and smoke nothing more than irritatingly confusing, and instinctively defaulting back to the last time everything was okay. A state where he could ignore all the niggling whispers of _wrong wrong wrong you know this is wrong_ before going back to sleep and hoping it was nowhere to be felt, that everything would be okay, when he woke up again.

The strange room and sight of his parents on the unfamiliar sofa, the sound of his mother's voice saying his name and the fact that there were _tears_ in his father's eyes, is all the proof he needs that nothing is going to be okay ever again.

/.\

Sam sees that very same default back to blissful ignorance, the factory reset, in Beth's face when they wake up on the motel room sofa after exhausting themselves into a not-really-sleep. He knows exactly how quickly her stomach hits the vicinity of her knees when reality smashes the glass of that ignorance like a particularly determined sledgehammer and he knows exactly how hard her heart is pounding against her ribs when she starts to sob.

He thinks that it might have been the sheer irrefutable _strangeness_ of seeing Beth without Dean that starts his own fugue to breaking. There are so few memories of Beth without Dean that he can't go far back enough to dredge them up and by the time her family takes her home he's so deep in memories, ones that hurt in a way he can't get a handle on, that he doesn't remember much else.

/.\

Sam wakes up with the memories little more than a distant ache and a painful clarity forcing the questions his mother had asked in the aftermath right to the forefront of his mind.

He rolls the questions over in his mind as he listens to his parents move around the kitchenette and main room. The details come to him as he thinks; the unnatural yellow of the eyes and the dripping blood and the smug certainty right before his eyes refocused on the ceiling.

Mary's words '_Sam, sweetheart, you have to tell me __**everything**__'_ ring in his ears and he pushes himself up and out of the bed with a deep breath.

He asks and he pushes for the, somewhat unexpected and surprising, backstory of his mother's early life and even turns the pressure to his father who looks like he might crumble into dust under the weight of Sam's expectant gaze.

The only reason he lets the issue lie is because there is something in the sharp ice of his mother's eyes that says it doesn't end here, no matter how much it feels like their entire world went up in blood and fire with Dean, and he recognises it as the same burning determination that has taken up in his own gut.

/.\

Sam settles into the backseat of the Impala and closes his eyes so that, in the little corner of his mind that he's guarding with the same kind of fierce determination he'd always attributed to Dean, he can pretend he isn't alone in the backseat and he can superimpose the sound of his brother's endearingly off-key rendition of the Greatest Hits of mullet rock over the silence.

He knows without opening his eyes that his mother is sitting stiffly in the passenger seat because it isn't _her_ seat. He knows without opening his eyes that his father's hands are white-knuckled at ten and two on the steering wheel and he's sitting just as uncomfortably as Mary because he hasn't adjusted the seat or the mirrors from the car's last driver.

Sam knows that it will take a really long time for John to adjust the seat and the mirrors because it will be another little thing lost that they won't ever get back.

/.\

It takes every ounce of determination Sam has to cross the lawn and then the threshold of the place he's called home his entire life. His mother is a few steps ahead of him, his father a few steps behind, and he doesn't even know whether the heaviness that settles in the air and makes it hard to breathe is clinging to them or to the house itself. The walls are blackened and he can see shattered glass from picture frames and blown out windows all over the floor.

The smell of smoke hangs like a shroud over everything and Sam looks back just in time to see his father hesitate near the foot of the staircase before taking a series of quick steps to catch up.

There's something sharp lingering on the fringes of Sam's senses and Mary starts to speak softly from the landing. "You notice that smell under the smoke? The sulphur?"

Sam and John turn their attention to her, following her up the rest of the stairs, as she tests each step tentatively. The smell gets stronger and Sam edges closer to her as John's breathing gets audibly ragged. She stops and looks over her shoulder. "Demons always leave traces of it behind. Always a good sign to look for if you aren't sure whether they've been around because the smell is so distinctive."

"It isn't here now, is it?" John asks and Sam wonders whether he's ever going to get used to this quieter, sadder, version of his father.

Mary shakes her head. "No. The smell would be stronger. It could be windy or the air might all of a sudden get really heavy but the sulphur's the best way to know." She hesitates as John nods, leaning heavily against the wall, and swallows before continuing. "I'm going to go and check the other bedrooms. You okay here?"

Sam doesn't remember nodding but he must have done so because Mary moves off down the hallway and John sinks to the ground, face buried in his knees, and leaves him facing the charred remains of his bedroom. The man from the fire department who said they could come back had said most of the house's architecture was still intact, something they couldn't really explain aside from a fast response and the fact that it burned fast and hot and then seemed to run out of fuel, but that there wasn't much except scorched walls and wrecked furniture in the upstairs rooms from when the fire flared out.

He still picks his way through bits of debris and ignores the harsh intake of breath from his father because all of his attention is centred on the blackened walls and the crumbled ashes of his wooden furniture. He can't bring himself to look to the ceiling.

It could have been seconds or it could have been hours that he stood there, staring around the room that he'd lived in what feels like _once upon a time_ or _in a universe far far away_, before a ray of sunlight hits something amidst the wreck of his bed and he's surging forward, regardless of the warning way the floor creaks underneath his feet, because he knows with an unwavering certainty that he needs whatever it is gleaming in the ashes.

After that time blurs, somehow fast and slow and completely unmoving all at once, but the next thing he knows he's in the backseat of the Impala again with the small bronze pendant digging into the skin of his palm and tears stinging at his eyes.

/.\

The ice cold clarity shatters all over again there in the house, leaving only the sharp pinpricks of pain in his palm, until it settles back into place several days later.

It washes away the haze when Sam's on his knees in the damp grass, the fingers of his left hand laid against four of the letters etched in the smooth stone, and the pendant he'd given as the first birthday gift he'd ever been allowed to pick for his brother clutched tight in the fingers of his right.

He doesn't look but he knows that his parents are standing a few yards back, red-eyed and stony-faced, and he leans forward to rest his forehead next to his fingers.

"So, turns out Mom's kind of a badass," he whispers. "And he's not really all there right now but you know just as good as me how scary Dad can be when he wants to be. We're gonna find the demon that did this to you, okay?" He closes his eyes.

"I promise you, Dean, we're gonna find him and then I'm gonna kill him myself."


	8. interlude iv

_**For **devil-with-a-whip-in-hand** because she's listened to more sobbing about this entire story than anyone should have to endure.**_

* * *

**interlude iv.** _Beth tells their story._

"I found my soul mate when I was seven years, eight months and two days old. He was seven years, two months and fourteen days old and I know that forever isn't really something you understand at all when you're that young but I came home and said to my mom 'I'm going to marry Dean Winchester one day whether he wants me to or not' and, really, that was it. Signed, sealed, delivered." Beth swallows, smooths the crinkled edges of the paper, and deliberately doesn't look up because she can't stand to make this any more real than it already is. "I knew I was done the moment he punched the playground bully just so I wouldn't get in trouble for having to kick him in the balls for pulling my hair. My favourite colour changed overnight from blue to green, to the exact shade of his eyes, and my life's mission became to search for a cure for cooties so it wouldn't get in the way of us playing together."

"He punched the boys who pulled my hair to get my attention and I put real worms in the sandwiches of the girls who followed him around like he was the pied piper. I said he was the only boy who wasn't dirty and smelly and gross and he said I was the only girl who wasn't stupid and giggly and weird. It was us against the world and it was perfect." Her throat is dry and tight and she takes a steadying breath, feeling her knees tremble underneath her, as she hears someone let out a choked sob. She doesn't know whether it was Mary or her own mother or someone else entirely and still can't bring herself to look because as long as she keeps the paper the only thing in her line of sight she can pretend that she's reading this to herself at home.

She's gone past pretending that the whole thing is a nightmare. That hasn't worked for days.

"He was nine and I was ten the summer I broke my ankle and he pretty much carried me half a mile home from the park. My brother took us to the hospital and he wouldn't let go of my hand so the nurses let him in my room to hold it while they set and casted my ankle. I let him choose the colour of my cast and he chose green because he knew it was what I would have pi-picked." Her voice cracks and she has to hold on tight to the podium as her ankle aches, just for a moment, like it was seven years ago all over again. She thinks that, if she concentrated, she might be able to feel the phantom pressure of his fingers around hers.

"We were both eleven when a car mounted the curb and sent him and his bike into a fire hydrant. He was bleeding and wouldn't wake up when I shouted at him but the second I started crying he was blinking and swearing and trying to shut me up because he hated it when I cried. I bit the EMT who tried to separate us and he told me later that he didn't think he'd be able to aim his puke at her shoes so well." A tearful giggle burbles out of her throat because she remembers his hazy, goofy, pride and the wonky smile he'd given her from the ambulance stretcher while they waited for his parents.

"We were both twelve the Valentine's Day he gave me a Hershey's kiss and a sunflower and this smug little grin that I knew only ever meant trouble. It was trouble right up until my thirteenth birthday a few months later when we had the chick flick moment to end all chick flick moments. He put a necklace that he spent two months saving for around my neck, kissed me once and we didn't have to say a word. He did, though, because he wanted to make sure I knew that sappy stuff was still off limits." She remembers every second of that night.

"He was thirteen and I was fourteen when I knew we were forever and what that really meant. We fumbled, swore and had no idea what we were doing, ended up laughing so hard we cried, and gave up because it really didn't matter. Six months later we fumbled, swore and had no idea what we were doing, ended up laughing so hard we cried again and it was perfect anyway." She has to blink away the tears clumping up her eyelashes by this point and her grip on the sides of the podium has turned white-knuckled.

"We were both fifteen when someone tried to come between us and it blew up, kind of literally, in their face. Turns out that it was a stupid idea from the beginning because between his genius little brother and my badass big one we didn't even really need to lift a finger to prove that you don't mess with a Winchester or a Richardson and you especially don't mess with both." She so desperately wants to look up and find Sam and Tyson's faces but she needs to finish this before she loses it.

"We were both sixteen when he slipped a plain white gold ring on my left hand because I can't stand yellow gold and asked me to wear it until he could give me the diamond I deserved. I said that I'd wear it until I got that diamond, slipped a gummy ring on his left hand, and tried to get him to promise the same. He wore it right up until the dog ate it off his finger." The giggle sounds more like a sob this time and she sucks in another desperate breath because that ring is still sitting on her hand and she can't look at it.

"He was sixteen and I was seventeen when I learned that it doesn't really matter if you find your soul mate when you're seven years, eight months and two days old because sometimes you aren't going to get to keep them even though you're pretty sure you were supposed to be forever." The words are coming slower and quieter around the lump in her throat and the sting in her eyes but she's almost there.

"He was sixteen and I was seventeen when he drove me home, kissed me good night, left with an 'I love you' and a promise to pick me up bright and early for school on Thursday." The tears spill and her legs are shaking almost violently but she ignores the hand someone puts on her back and swallows again. She blinks, trying to clear her eyes enough to read the last words, and finally has to release the podium to swipe at her face.

"I know h-he didn't want to break that promise," she manages to say, "I _know_ he didn't mean to break it," and then her eyes are blurring all over again and she can't find her voice again no matter how hard she tries. The last words remain unsaid.

_Because our story wasn't supposed to end like this_.

* * *

_**So this only happened because I had a conversation with someone about what would have changed about Dean's relationship tendencies if he'd had sixteen years of a normal life and we both ended up arguing for him being the devoted boy-next-door type. Also, too many feelings about teenage Dean.**_


	9. part v

**part v.** _The loss seems to grow deeper and the hurt even more as time passes. John tries to find his feet in an unfamiliar world as Mary reconnects with the life she fled and Sam isn't going to wait for everyone else to decide what they're doing anymore._

Dean's been gone for eleven days by the time John thinks he can go back to work at the garage without expecting to see him, grease-smeared and grinning, roll out from underneath one of the wrecks out back or sprawled against the hood of the Impala. He thought wrong, as he soon finds out, but having something to concentrate on aside from insurance papers and trying to adjust his whole idea of real and make believe to fit Mary's words is better than nothing. He has a sunburst pentagram tattoo inked over his heart and thinks of his son every time the healing skin pulls with movement.

A full two weeks pass before Mary lets Sam return to school with an anti-possession tattoo, henna for the meantime, and protective sigils meticulously placed under his uniform and a flask of holy water and canister of salt secreted away in his pockets. It takes more convincing than John thought he was capable of to even get to the point of having a conversation about it. He doesn't say how reluctant he is to let Sam out of both their sight either.

Mary doesn't go back to work. She waits for the first day that John and Sam are both gone from the temporary apartment that the insurance company is paying for, while they repair the house and decide whether they're going to be able to live there again, and picks up the phone because she can't keep waiting for the grief to fade before _doing_ something.

"Edward Campbell," she says to the directory operator. "Greenville, Illinois."

Seven rings echo in her ears before a gruff "Campbell" comes through the receiver.

Something in her chest tightens and she feels like she's fourteen and covered in chupacabra blood in the middle of an Illinois field all over again. Her voice trembles. "Uncle Ed?"

/.\

Mary is still sitting in the living room, the phone cradled loosely in her hands and the dog with his head on her knee, when she hears the quiet sound of a key turning the lock of the front door. The devil's trap drawn on the bottom of the doormat and the fact that Tank stays where he is reassures her that the footsteps coming down the hall aren't a danger.

Sam is the first out of the hallway and he hugs her, silently, when he reaches the living area. She presses her lips to the side of his head and holds him for a moment, reassuring both of them, before lifting her eyes to find Beth and Tyson as Sam reaches down to pat the animal at her feet.

Beth looks pale and exhausted and Mary pulls her into a hug as Sam takes his backpack over towards the table. The girl hasn't said more than half a dozen words at a time since the funeral and Mary's heart aches every time she looks at her. Tyson waits by the dining table until she leaves the pair of teenagers on the sofa and heads towards the kitchen.

"I got a hold of Singer," he says quietly when Mary pushes a mug of coffee into his hands. "He says that I can bring you there between Christmas and the New Year and he'll see what he has as far as lore goes."

She nods, wrapping her own hands around a steaming mug as well, and takes a mouthful. "I'll put it to John and Sam," she says. "I called my uncle earlier today."

Tyson glances up at her over his coffee. "Yeah?"

Her hands tighten around her mug. "Yeah. Told him about what happened when Mom and Dad died." She swallows thickly. "Told him about Dean too. He's going to talk to the rest of the family and come here after Thanksgiving, I think, if all goes to plan. He's sending me my old journal and Dad's."

"The more people who have your back the better, Mary." Tyson squeezes her forearm briefly and manages a small, lopsided, grin. "You can never have too many guns for backup, right?"

/.\

John's face goes pale and a little pinched when Mary tells him about calling her uncle that night while she checks the salt lines and he follows her, watching and committing the little sigils and bits of information she adds to memory, from door to window and then into their bedroom. She remembers the way that same expression would come over his face whenever he and her father were in the same room and feels a sharp pang of sorrow deep in her chest.

She winds their fingers together and settles her head on his chest when they go to bed. "Uncle Ed isn't Dad," she says softly, not looking up, and plays with the neckline of his t-shirt. The familiar position doesn't make the strangeness of the unfamiliar room any less. "They didn't get along so great most of the time, actually, but he always had a soft spot for my mom and me. Sometimes I thought about calling him, mending bridges, you know?"

He nods once, presses a kiss into her hair, and curls an arm around her. She sighs and relaxes into his warmth. "He didn't blame me for what happened to Mom and Dad." Her breathing hitches. "Said it wasn't my fault that it got Dean."

"The terms you agreed to weren't supposed to hurt anyone," John says and bites back the twisting feeling in his gut that he doesn't really want to examine. "Your parents were gone before you agreed to anything and nothing happened when you were waiting for it. It wasn't you that threw the rulebook out, Mary, so he's right."

Later, when she's cried herself to sleep against his shoulder and he's still lying awake with a hand cupping the back of her neck, he'll let the words and the blame that he'd bitten back burn their way up through his throat and die on his lips because there's more than enough to go around for the both of them.

/.\

Sam hates school for the first time in his life by the middle of November. He's tired of the teachers talking to him like he's a frightened animal, cornered and cowering, because he _isn't_. Not now.

He's tired of his classmates watching him with wide eyes like he's going to break any second and he's tired of the stupid senior girls getting misty-eyed whenever he goes to sit with Beth and James at lunch. He's especially tired of the soft-spoken yearbook coordinator who asks _him_ about a tribute page because neither of his parents is apparently able to bear to come near the school. A bitter, angry part of him wonders how they think it makes _him_ feel.

He's tired of the fact that he's got to go and do all this _bullshit normal_ every day and then go home to an apartment that isn't really home, a father that still looks almost as lost as he did when he came stumbling out of the burning house with no one but the dog, and a mother that surprises and very nearly frightens him at turns.

Mostly he's just tired of being tired because he can't sleep without seeing his brother pinned, bleeding and burning, on the back of his eyelids.

/.\

Sam lasts six days at school before he pushes aside the homework that, for the first time he can remember, seems completely useless in the face of everything he's seen in the last three weeks. Mary glances up at him from the other side of the table, a handful of newspaper clippings spread in front of her, and a legal pad filled with her careful handwriting to her left.

"You need help, sweetheart?" she asks quietly.

He shakes his head. "I'm done. It doesn't _matter_, Mom, not like whatever you're doing."

She raises an eyebrow at him and he clenches his jaw against the surge of anger that bubbles up. He might only be twelve but he knows exactly how unlikely he is to win an argument with her when he's too angry to think straight. "I want to help," he says after a moment and a deep, slow, breath. "I want to know more about what we have to do to make sure the demon can't get us again and about what you did when you used to hunt."

She looks at him for a few long moments and he can almost see the pros and cons being weighed up behind her tired-looking eyes as she gets to her feet. "Wait here," she says and disappears down the hallway. He has to actively restrain himself from leaning over the table to look at the newspaper clippings and her notes.

When she returns to the kitchen she has two leather-bound journals in her arms and slides the smaller and lighter coloured of the two across the table to him. "This was mine," she says evenly. "Most hunters keep a journal. My dad gave me this on my twelfth birthday and told me that I needed to record all the things I knew about the things we hunted. How to track them, how to defend against them, how to kill them. That's ten years of hunts and knowledge and thoughts right there. Everything I know."

Sam touches the cover, traces the etched symbols with eager and reverent fingers, and looks up at his mother. She looks older than he's ever seen her look before and there's a vaguely ill feeling in his stomach at the hardness he hadn't quite noticed settling into her features before now. "You can't unlearn these things, Sam," she says, her voice low, and splays her own hand over the cover of the larger journal. "I tried to forget, to run, and you know what happened. I don't want this for you, you know. I said to someone once, a long time ago, that raising my kids in this life was the worst thing I could imagine."

He hasn't answered her, turning the words over in his mind, when John's voice comes from the doorway. "Don't think we've got much choice now, Mary."

The both of them turn to look at him. He's standing straighter, taller, and there's the underlying hint of steel in his voice and his eyes and the lines of his face that they haven't seen since _before_. Relief curls in Sam's belly, sharp and sudden, and Mary breathes out softly.

She holds out the journal in her hands and John crosses the room to take it. He looks at Sam and his lips curve, just a little, as he settles into the seat beside Mary. "Can I copy from you if there's a test, Sammy?"

Mary's giggle is startled and small, like she can't quite believe she'd just laughed, and Sam's is harsher and doesn't really sound like his anymore but it's far more than they'd had until that moment. The silence that falls after that, broken only by the turning of pages and quiet questions, isn't as heavy as before.


	10. interlude v

**interlude v.** _The Winchesters don't have much to celebrate this Thanksgiving._

_Thanksgiving 1994_

Mary and Renee watch from the kitchen doorway, misty-eyed and smiling stupidly, as their children and husbands greet each other in the entryway. Jason and John nod and clap shoulders, all easy smiles, and Tyson noogies Sam enthusiastically as the eleven year old frantically tries to get free of his grip with a cry of 'uncle!'

Their eyes find Beth, stretched up on tiptoe, with the tip of her nose against Dean's and one dimple showing in a delighted smile as his hands hold her hips steady. He whispers something and she giggles, slapping at his shoulder, before easing down off her toes with a quick kiss to his mouth.

"Stop being gross!" Sam shouts from underneath Tyson's arm, yelping as he ends up hauled into a fireman's carry and carried into the living room, and flails his arms uselessly. "Ugh, Tyson, you suck! Dean, stop being gross and _help me_!"

Jason laughs as John shakes his head in amusement while Sam's flailing form disappears into the living room over Tyson's shoulder. "You know how to get out of that hold!" Dean hollers back, snickering, as Beth laughs into his chest. "Save yourself, Sammy!"

"Come taste the pie filling for us, Dean," Renee says, waving the two teenagers into the kitchen. "This one's all on Beth and the final word's yours."

"You better like it," Beth says as his arm slides around her waist. "I don't think I've ever peeled so many damn apples in my life."

"Beth, it's _pie,_" Dean says with a sigh as they head towards the kitchen. "_Apple pie_. Have I ever not liked a pie?"

_Thanksgiving 1995_

Thanksgiving morning dawns cool and crisp. Sam is curled on the sofa underneath a plain afghan, early morning cartoons playing quietly, with Tank on the floor in front of him. Her journal is on the end table closest to him, a notebook tucked underneath it, and she crosses the room to cup his cheek gently. "Morning, sweetheart. Happy Thanksgiving."

He grabs her hand and holds it for a moment. "Mornin'," he murmurs before he releases it and relaxes into the sofa cushions and his blanket nest again. "You too."

She brushes some hair from his forehead and kisses it lightly. "You want some breakfast?"

He nods before catching her hand again. "Not pancakes, please."

Her throat tightens but she nods and strokes his cheek with her thumb. "French toast okay? I think we've got some frozen berries and syrup."

His soft sound of agreement is echoed by a vague rumbling noise coming from the dog who looks up sharply, as though startled, and they both find themselves snorting with laughter. Mary ruffles the fur between his ears and straightens up before heading back towards the kitchen.

John makes his way into the kitchen twenty minutes later, fumbling with the coffeemaker, while she slides a few slices of still warm French toast onto a third plate and tops them with berries and a liberal drizzle of syrup. He blinks at the plate for a few seconds, a furrow of vague confusion between his eyebrows, before his eyes clear and he lets out a quiet "oh" of understanding.

They take the food and coffee into the living room, a mug of hot chocolate cradled in the crook of Mary's elbow, and settle on the sofa as well. Sam leans into her side as they watch the Coyote fail to catch the Roadrunner over and over again and they stay there long after the food is gone because there is something comforting about the easy silence underneath the noise of the television.

Later, Mary is wrist deep in apple pieces, vanilla beans and sugar and about to open her mouth and call for Dean to come test the filling when reality hits her all over again and her throat tightens painfully.

She isn't in _her_ kitchen and he isn't going to come even if she calls.

_Thanksgiving 1994_

The game of poker has taken over the entire dining table, cleared of leftovers, and grows more and more heated with every round as the pot of leftover Halloween candy, loose change and other pocket items keeps changing hands. Renee folds almost immediately in the tenth game and John huffs in disgust shortly afterwards, throwing down his useless hand, with Jason not far behind.

Dean and Tyson are eyeballing each other intently while Beth and Mary raise their eyebrows at each other. Sam smacks a hand down on the table. "If you four are done trying to psych each other out? I should remind you that you actually need to have brains for that to work," he says. "Hit."

John laughs. "That's it, Sammy, you keep these hustlers in line."

"Watch who you're calling hustlers there," Mary says, gesturing at him with her cards. "We just know all _your_ tells."

"Look who's talking, Mom," Dean says, a wicked grin curving his lips. "You're practically an open picture book."

John reaches for a high five and Dean obliges, taking care to keep his cards hidden, while Mary narrows her eyes. Beth leans over to her. "He diverts attention when he's bluffing," she says in a ridiculously loud whisper.

Sam groans. "You guys are the worst people to play anything with."

"I've gotta agree with Beth here," Tyson says as he leans back in his seat and stretches. "It's like your default move, dude."

"Hang on a second, when did it become gang-up-on-Dean?" Dean demands with wide eyes. "Besides, if we're talking about tells, why hasn't anyone pointed out the fact that Tyson picks his nose when he's got a good hand?"

The sound that leaves Tyson is a mixture of surprise and outrage and both Jason and Mary almost choke on their drinks as Sam and Beth turn considering looks upon Tyson in complete, eerie, sync.

"I always thought he was just scratching it," John says to Dean as a smirk turns the corner of his mouth up. "Renee, didn't you ever teach him that it's rude to try and pick a winner in company?"

"You know better than that," Renee says, waving a finger at her son. "I know you do."

Dean's satisfied grin as he leans against Beth and winks at Sam is enough to make Tyson start sputtering in fervent denial.

No one wins that hand because the cards end up flung in a mess upon the table but not even Sam complains, too flushed with laughter to care, when they abandon the table to pile into the living room as the familiar strains of _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ overlay the clamour of laughter and calls for popcorn and pie.

_Thanksgiving 1995_

The wooden spoon clatters to the ground as Mary tries to catch her breath. John appears in the doorway seconds later, face tight with worry, and is by her side in three strides. "Hey, hey," he murmurs. He eases an arm around her waist and takes her weight off the counter as he flicks the burner off with his other hand. "Easy there."

"M'okay," she says shakily after a few moments, her fingers wound in the fabric of his shirt, and steadies herself enough to stand up straight. "Sorry, I'm okay, I just-"

"It's okay," John says, keeping a loose hold on her, and kisses her forehead lightly. His own chest is tight as every breath sears his nose with the smell of apple and cinnamon and buttery pastry. "Don't need to explain. We'll leave it, okay? Just leave it and we'll go see Jase and Renee and try and get through a few more hours."

When they leave the house, Mary still trembling a little, Sam has a white-knuckled grip on a battered VCR tape. John ruffles his hair and squeezes his wrist lightly in silent, tacit, agreement. His son looks up at him, eyes too big and too wide and too _young_ in his face for John's heart to bear in that moment, and swallows.

"We still gotta watch it," he says quietly. His lower lip wavers before he sets his jaw, "S'tradition."

* * *

_**Hope everyone is enjoying this so far - posting might be a little fewer and further between in the next few weeks. I have a couple chapters up my sleeve but NaNo starts in just under four hours and I'm going to **_**try****_ and stick to my original work this time around. Class also goes back after the weekend so I also have readings coming out of my ears. Hope to hear from a few more of you as to whether you're liking it!_**


	11. part vi

**part vi. **_The Winchesters meet the Campbells._**  
**  
Mary's uncle looks almost exactly like she remembers when she sees him leaning against the same beat up old truck he's had since she was a teenager. A little older, a little greyer, maybe a little thicker in the middle but he still wears the same jacket and has the same military buzz cut he's always sported.

Sam is hovering close by John's side, watching the new arrivals with a mix of uneasy curiousity and wariness, as Mary takes the silver flask of holy water that John slides into her hand and crosses the parking lot towards the truck and the Bluebird that has pulled in behind it.

"Uncle Ed," she says quietly, voice thick and a little wobbly and just this side of cracking, as she passes him the flask. "Sorry but I just- I can't-"

He cuts her off by taking a mouthful, handling the silver easily, and he's just handed the flask back to when she wraps her arms around his neck. "Mary, sweetheart," he says and his arms come up to hold her against him. "God but it's good to see you."

Mumbling some vague kind of agreement, she squeezes hard enough that some rational part of her brain says that she's surely hurting him. She turns her head back, towards John and Sam, and doesn't point because that would involve loosening her grip and she's quite sure she isn't capable of that yet.

"That's my husband," she says and turns her face back towards her uncle as her grip on the back of his shirt tightens. "That's John an-and that's our Sam."

He nods, hand cradling the back of her head gently, and makes a quiet sound of acknowledgement. She pulls back after another moment, taking a deep breath and blinking a few times, and looks over Edward's shoulder to where a woman she doesn't recognise and grown men who surely _can't_ be her cousins are finishing the tests. She didn't see it but neither John or Sam have spoken up and that blanks out any fear.

"Mark?" she asks incredulously. "Johnny? Is that really you?"

Johnny grins, crooked and endearing as the ten year old she remembers, and nods. "You got old, Mary." Mark comes around the side of the car to stand beside his brother and smile at her too, a softer version of the gap-toothed grin of their childhood, and she almost forgets that it's been over twenty years.

"_I_ got old?" she says, taking a couple of steps towards them, and feeling something tight in her chest loosen just a little. "You two are giants. When the hell did you stop being my scrawny little cousins?"

"I got big junior year but Mark here was a shrimp right up to about eighteen," Johnny says with a sideways grin. He moves forward and wraps her in a hug. When he speaks his voice is a little rough with emotion. "You're still just as pretty as I remember, old lady or not, Mary."

She hugs him back tightly as Mark squeezes her hand tightly and pulls her into a briefer embrace that is no less meaningful. When she releases him and steps back, John steady and warm behind her and Sam stepping to her side, she feels like maybe getting through this might not be as impossible as she's been thinking.

/.\

Edward shakes hands like a Marine, John thinks, and there's something in the way he holds on just a second longer than necessary. Something sad in the way he looks between Mary and Sam and back to John with a wistful shine to his eyes. Something in his voice when he pats his nephew's shoulder and says quietly "Would have loved to have met your brother, Sam."

John sees the glassy trace of tears that Sam blinks away quickly before nodding. He doesn't respond but Edward smiles like he understands, nods at John with an expression that says _I'm sorry about your boy_ and looks like it did on every CO John saw coming home from Vietnam, and then follows Mary into the apartment as Tank noses at each person who goes through the front door. They all pass muster, Tank glancing at John as if to confirm that everything's okay, and the dog trots back into the living room.

A silence hovers behind them as the Campbells and Mary disappear down the hall. Sam leans into John's side. "Wanna watch a movie with me?" he asks quietly.

Wrapping an arm around his son's shoulders, John nods and steers him towards the couch. "Sounds like an idea, Sammy. What you got in mind?"

/.\

Mary barely remembers her uncle's first wife, Lucille, but it only takes her a few moments to decide that she definitely likes Annette.

"I wish we could have met under better circumstances, honey," the tall woman says gently and Mary is reminded forcefully of her own mother. "Edward gave us the basics after you called. We've made some calls and have some people on the lookout in case something like this happens again."

"We're so sorry about Dean, Mary," Mark says with a squeeze of her elbow.

"We'll do everything we can to help you keep John and Sam safe," Johnny adds and Mary remembers that same fierce tone coming from a six year old trying to convince her that he certainly _could_ handle the kickback from a shotgun almost as long as he was tall.

"Have you gotten anything else out of Sam about what he saw?" Edward asks. "We're still waiting on information about any other fires that fit the parameters."

"We're going to see someone after Christmas," Mary says after a few seconds. "A man in South Dakota. Robert Singer's his name. You heard of him? He's supposed to know a lot about demons."

"Singer?" Edward asks. "Yeah, I've heard a little. Not exactly the social type though." He frowns slightly. "How'd you get in touch with him?"

Mary traces the outline of an imperfection in the wood of the table with her fingers. "Dean's girlfriend's brother is a Marine," she says. "An ifrit took out a bunch of them in combat and he's been doing freelance hunting with Singer the past few years. He put us in contact and called in a favour."

"I heard a hunter with Marine training took down a Wendigo a few months back," Annette says. "Not a really old one, granted, but everyone said he was crazy for going after it on his own. He came back with hardly a scratch on him. That your friend?"

"Probably," Mary says. "He's going to stop by tomorrow if you're still going to be here."

Johnny grins at her again, lopsided and heartbreakingly familiar, and she grasps his hand when he reaches for hers. "Ain't getting rid of us that soon, Mary."

/.\

John is blinking away what he'll deny are tears because _how the hell is this appropriate for kids_ when Sam shifts against his shoulder. "Dean loved this movie." His voice is quiet and a little shaky. "He pretended to hate it but he always cried right here too."

His chest tightens and he leans back into Sam. "Yeah? Seems kind of chick flicky for him. He always did like animated stuff though."

Sam nods and John feels moisture seep through the sleeve of his shirt. "Beth wanted to see it when it came out and she told me he cried and she laughed. She bought it for him when it came out." They both watch as Simba pleads for Mufasa to wake up and John's eyes sting while Sam lets out a tiny, hiccupping sob. "He was watching it in his room and I came in and then we watched it together and we both cried."

They watch in silence for a while, tears drying, until Sam shifts again. The lion, meerkat and warthog are singing and John is almost unwillingly entranced by the song. "We would sing this too," Sam murmurs. "Really badly."

John can't help but snort a laugh at that. "Takes talent to sing as badly as him," he agrees quietly and a warmth settles in his stomach to temper the pang of grief when he thinks of all the favourite songs he'd listened to Dean butcher over the years. "Think it was on purpose?"

Sam nods against his arm and John glances down in time to catch a glimpse of a smile. "Definitely."

_The Lion King_ lasts for eighty nine minutes and, in those, John learns more about the son he thought he knew better than anyone else in the world than he thinks he learned in the last sixteen years.

/.\

Mary glances up from her father's journal when she hears the door creak. John and Sam, looking more relaxed than she's seen them in weeks, are framed in the doorway. The corner of John's mouth lifts in a slight smile. "Sammy and me were thinking pizza," he says. "Place downtown does a hell of a meat-lovers."

Johnny straightens immediately, eyes shooting to the doorway, and nods in agreement. "You had me at pizza."

"That sounds good," Edward says, rubbing at his eyes from where he's bent over his own journal, and glances sideways at Annette and Mark. "I'm not fussy." Annette echoes him.

"So long as there's no plant-life on it I'll eat it," Mark agrees.

Mary swallows around the sudden, inexplicable, lump in her throat and manages a nod. "Pizza sounds great. You guys doing okay?"

Sam nods and steps from John's side to skirt the table and come to hers. "We're good, Mom. Are you?"

The lump grows bigger as he hugs her quickly around the shoulders. "I'm good, sweetheart." She hugs his waist, hard, and takes a calming breath. "Your movie done?"

He nods again as John heads for the phone. "Yeah." His eyes flicker around the room, settling briefly on each person, and the determination that both terrifies her and makes her ache with a bitter kind of pride eases into his features. "What have you figured out?"

Edward looks at her with a raised eyebrow and Annette's eyes widen a little in understanding. Johnny and Mark share a surprised look. She looks up at her son and reaches to ruffle his hair. "Go grab the journal and we'll fill you both in when your dad's done ordering dinner, okay?"

Sam disappears down the hallway. Mary looks at her uncle and the lump is bigger than ever. "I never wanted him in this," she says as John comes back into the room. He meets her eyes, gaze dark and warm and familiar, and closes her fingers around her pen. "Never. I wish I could have told him it was an electrical fault like everyone else thinks but he _saw_ it."

Her words settle in a heavy silence and, when Sam returns, he pauses for a moment. Mark shifts his seat to the side and tilts his head towards the space next to him. "There's room here," he says easily. "Wanna show me what you've already got?"

Sam slides into the seat quickly, ignoring the eyes of the rest of the room, and flips open the journal to his own notes immediately. His eyes spark with determination and his voice is steady and confident as he shows Mark the page where he'd written everything he could remember about the demon standing over his bed that night. Johnny leans closer from the other side of his brother, impressed, to join in.

When Mary and John find each other's eyes again, amidst the quiet conversation that starts up, an understanding passes silently between them. Edward, hand resting over Annette's, catches both their gazes and the same understanding burns behind his grey eyes.

Annette looks from her husband to Mary and John. "I think this demon picked the wrong family to go after," she says and glances across the table to where Sam is looking up at them from the journal. She nods at him and then fixes her eyes on Mary. "We'll help you finish this, honey. You don't mess with Campbells."

"Or Winchesters." John's voice is still rougher than it was before the fire but there's no bite to the words, simply a statement of fact, as he looks to Sam. "You don't mess with any of us."

* * *

_**Sorry about the delay, NaNo is kicking my butt already and I may have developed a tumblr problem right when classes started again. Real smart, right?**_


	12. part vii

**part vii.** _The week between Christmas and New Years in South Dakota isn't exactly bubbling over with cheer. Bobby's had a lot of hunters through for training and advice but there's something about John and Mary Winchester and their son that breaks his heart._

Bobby's seen a hell of a lot of hunters pass through his salvage yard over the last twenty years and he can count the ones he genuinely likes on one hand. Tyson Richardson is one, for all that the cocky kid can infuriate him like few else, and he's trying to keep an open mind as best he can based purely on that.

The story Tyson told him was enough to make even his hardened old heart hurt for the Winchester family. The demon's attack is intriguing and frightening all at once because nothing Bobby knows, and he knows a lot after this many years in the business, about demons and what they want jives with the story from the mother. He's never heard of a demon dealing for anything but a soul, let alone something as small as a favour that won't hurt someone, but it's been twenty two years and the mother is living, breathing, still human and has a soul.

None of it adds up at all and Bobby can't find any real significance in the way the eldest boy died either. There's no lore linking fire, ceilings, and a slashed stomach and they're the only details Tyson had passed along. Too many people die in house fires for him to be able to get an accurate fix on which ones could be linked to the demon and he can't even say whether the ones who made the deals died or survived.

He _really_ doesn't want to speculate on just what the demon wants access to the house to do, regardless of the binding word that no one is harmed if they don't interrupt, because there's a twelve year old boy involved and Bobby doesn't think any hunter isn't affected by cases involving kids.

Tyson calls in, "told you these _newfangled contraptions_ were good for something, you grumpy old bastard," he says with a laugh, when they're an hour out from the yard and Bobby rubs at his eyes then gets up from the desk to start something to eat. There's a pot of chili simmering on the stove when he hears the loud rumble of an engine and the dogs start up.

The sight of the well-kept Chevy makes him think that maybe it won't be so hard to get along with these folks as he'd thought. Tyson climbs out of the passenger side, muttering disgruntledly at the still growling dogs, and nods to Bobby. "Singer!"

He calls the dogs off with a sharp whistle and jerk of his head towards the house. They obediently trot back onto the porch. "Richardson," he says in greeting and watches as a tall, solid man exits the driver's side of the car. Dark hair spotted with hints of grey and intently focused dark eyes are the first things he notices. The man moves with the same military efficiency that makes Tyson the kind of hunter that Bobby sends out after the big cases and he thinks that it's true that you don't ever really leave the Corps.

The blonde woman who slides out of the back seat doesn't look like anything more than a pretty little housewife, he thinks at first glance, but the second the floppy-haired boy exits the car he can see the change in her posture, face, and entire demeanour. Sharp eyes take stock of him instantly and he relaxes the set of his own shoulders to compensate for any threat she might find in him.

"John Winchester," the man says and his handshake is steady and strong. "My wife, Mary, and our son Sam." Bobby notes the barely-there hitch in his voice over the word 'son', the way he cuts it short and sharp, and pretends he doesn't see the way John's eyes gloss over for a split second before he blinks. He just returns the handshake.

"Call me Bobby. Got some chili heatin' up inside if you haven't eaten."

Sam's eyes, some colour between brown and blue that Bobby can't quite get a handle on, slide past him to the porch where one of the puppies is lurching clumsily up the steps. A smile quirks the corners of his mouth upwards. "Boys and dogs," he says as the family moves past him and nods to Sam. "They're all friendly, kid. Go for it."

/.\

Tyson takes Sam outside to play with the dogs after dinner after a significant look from Bobby.

"Havin' real trouble narrowin' down the lore on whatever this bastard is," the older man says without preamble when John and Mary's eyes shift to focus on him. "Tyson gave me the bare bones to get started but I need everythin' you can remember if I'm gonna be able to help track it."

Mary takes a deep breath and John covers her hand with his as Bobby pulls a blank notepad towards himself. "We were tracking this pattern of strange deaths when this hunter from out of town rolled on in…"

/.\

The uncoordinated puppy from the steps is sprawled in Sam's lap, legs akimbo and belly happily bared while his tail beats a steady rhythm on the boy's thigh, when Tyson looks up from the boxer who's ears he's been scratching for the last fifteen minutes.

"How you doing?" he asks quietly. "With everything. It's been a hell of a couple months and I know that Thanksgiving and Christmas kind of sucked."

Sam shrugs one shoulder, fingers still rubbing at the excitable puppy's belly, and doesn't look up. "School's easier," he admits after a moment. "Some people are still acting weird and everything but I can concentrate in class better and I still get to sit with Beth and James at lunch. Mom's been teaching us stuff when I'm done with homework and Dad's home from work. Uncle Edward calls pretty often too."

Tyson absorbs his words in silence. "I miss him too," he offers and leans back against the junker they're sitting by. "My mom and dad miss him and, by God, does Beth miss him. They still set an extra place at the table some nights."

His fingers don't pause on the dog's stomach but Tyson can hear Sam's breath hitch a little bit. "I miss him a lot," the twelve year old says after another moment. "Still not used to it. Dad didn't readjust the Impala's seat or mirrors until we had to drive as far as here and he didn't even have to say anything but I could tell it broke his heart. Mom can't make pie anymore and she gets this-this _look_ on her face when she tells me stuff about demons." He swallows, takes a ragged breath, and finally looks at Tyson. His eyes are fierce and terrified all at once. "Tank sleeps on my bed now and he's never slept anywhere but Dean's before."

Tyson stretches out his free hand to settle it beside Sam's on the puppy. "He was there your whole life, Sam," he says. "It's gonna take a lot longer than a couple of months to get used to anything else." He leans to the side and nudges him. "Hell, you could get as old as me and still not be used to it and that would be okay. You know, for what it's worth, I think you're doing real good. I know he'd be so proud of you."

Those words are all it takes for Sam to turn and bury his face in Tyson's shoulder as the tears come.

/.\

Bobby has a page of cramped notes and a dull ache in the pit of his stomach by the time Mary and John are done with their story. He rubs his eyes and pushes the paper away before standing up and moving from the table to bring over another bottle of rotgut. He pours John three fingers, Mary two, and tips whatever's left into his own glass.

"So whatever he was doing he needed to be invited in, there was blood involved, and he wants something with the kids that isn't going to hurt them," he says tiredly. "I'll try and get as much as I can on suspicious deaths back in '73 and then anything hinky going down in those families with kids after '83."

Mary nods, hands wrapped around the tumbler of whiskey, and John tips back half his glass in one swallow. "Any idea what we do in the meantime?" he asks roughly. "How we keep Sammy safe and get ready for when we find this bastard?"

Bobby looks at him, long and appraising, and takes a mouthful of his own whiskey. "You get your boy inked permanently," he says evenly. "Couple places if he can handle it. Over the heart, one on the hip or the wrist as well. I've got some amulets you'll need to start wearing and I wouldn't go back to your house."

Both of them nod. "He's got a standing invitation there," Mary murmurs. "We'll sell and get another place."

"When you settle somewhere make the protections part of the architecture. Paint your devil's traps over the doors and on every ceiling, a shade or two lighter or darker than the base colour, and put them on the bottom of rugs and doormats." Bobby tips back the rest of his whiskey. "Permanent salt lines on every doorway. As many iron and silver fixtures as you can."

John taps his fingers against his glass. "And as far as dealing with the rest of the supernatural?"

"Sounds like the most worryin' thing you gotta deal with is this demon," Bobby says and raises an eyebrow. "Tyson didn't say you were interested in hunting other stuff."

"We aren't jumping into this blind," Mary says quietly. "I've been out of the loop for a long time but once you know what's out there you're a target, I remember that much. I'm not planning on letting anything, demon or otherwise, get close enough without getting taken down. We can teach Sam, keep him safe, but I need a refresher and John needs teaching first."

Bobby looks between Mary's pale eyes and John's dark ones. "Got a salt and burn, easy job, a couple hours away," he says finally. "Was gonna send Tyson on it tomorrow. Spirit isn't violent yet but seems to be heading that way so it needs to be taken care of. Sound like somethin' you'd want to tag along on?"

* * *

_**Okay, so I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has reviewed and those of you still reading. The rest of November is going to be swallowed by class and my NaNo so I apologise in advance if there's a few weeks before the next chapter.**_


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